Student set up digs in NY library

A second-year student at New York University has described spending eight months sleeping in a library basement because he could not afford campus housing, even though he had four jobs.

Steve Stanzak, 20, said he began spending six hours a night in the basement of Bobst Library at the beginning of the academic year, when he was unable to pay a $1,000 (£565) housing deposit.

He slept on four chairs, carried a laptop computer, books, clothes in his backpack and kept his toiletries and other clothes in storage lockers.

University officials, who found the online journal he kept about his experiences, gave him a free room in a student hall last week.

He has four jobs, receives a $15,000 scholarship and has several student loans, but with no financial help from his divorced parents had only enough to cover the tuition fees, about $31,000 a year for full-time undergraduates, he said.

Undergraduate housing costs between $7,700 and $16,600 a year. A university spokesman, John Beckman, said: "Seventy per cent of our students are on financial aid. If they have a problem they choose to come to talk to us and we find a way to help them. This person chose a pretty unique solution to his issues."

Scores of students read about Mr Stanzak's adventures in his web journal, and he became something of a celebrity.

"I thank everyone who helps me get through the day, and makes me realise that although I'm poor and live in a library ... that I'm learning a lot about life, and that I will make it through this," says an entry dated April 15.

The security guards woke him about five times, twice telling him he could not sleep there, other times checking that he was OK.

"I wasn't afraid of being thrown out of the library," he told the New York Times. "My worst fear was getting kicked out of NYU."